How Not to Get Into IT

Context. Recently, our columnist Yegor Kaleynik told On Entering the IT World in 2024 [тык]. Many of us, even those who have not previously worked in the IT field, sometimes think: "Shouldn't I change my field of activity?" At the request of the editorial board of the metroboy.PRO Aliaksandr Zantovich, a former author of the lady.tut.by, as well as a former employee of one of the Belarusian banks, decided to tell how he himself did not become part of the IT sphere.

At one point, I seriously wanted to go into IT.

Things had become really gloomy at the bank; business wasn't growing, my career had stalled, and my salary wasn't going up.

And most of my friends ended up in this new "sexy" industry. And if you listen to them, it sounds like it's not a job at all, but heaven on earth.

Pay based on performance units, fruit and donuts in the offices, table tennis, four-hand massages, and free French classes.

And also something that I have never dreamed of at all - assessments every year with an almost inevitable increase in salary to some indecent values for a blue-eyed woman. 

And so, you could say, in my old age, I decided it was time for a change and sat down to write a resume—something I hadn't done in a very long time.

It quickly became clear that when you’re a well-respected professional, writing a resume can be difficult. You’re used to everyone in your field knowing who you are, and your accomplishments speak for themselves. As they say, a student’s record speaks for itself.

And here you need to tell people who are hearing about you for the first time just how great you are.

I thought about it for a long time, consulted with smart people, and came up with two basic principles.

First of all, if you think about it, you might realize that you’ve done a lot of things throughout your career outside of IT that are actually quite useful for an IT professional—even though you didn’t realize it at the time.

I managed people and projects, and maybe even set automation tasks. It's just that in IT, all of this is called by other fancy terms.

And the second recommendation is not to be shy about praising yourself.

Belarusians are mostly modest people. It's not part of our culture to tell everyone we meet how great they are. Especially not in a concise and straightforward way, like an elevator pitch or a resume.

Anyway, I finally managed to come up with something after a lot of struggle, so let's start sending it out to job openings.

And that's when things got really tough.

Since, I repeat, I had achieved something in my field, in my dreams among employers a fight began for me. Something like women's fights in a bikini. During this fight, my salary was constantly growing. And I would end up choosing where to take my knowledge and skills – to Amazon or to Microsoft.

In reality, things turned out a little differently.

Okay, that's a whole different story.

It actually turned out differently.

It turns out that, at almost forty, almost no one at this IT company needs me.

Because, first of all, it's old.

Secondly, for the starting positions, what is called overqualified. And for non-starters, it is underqualified. 

Inexperienced HR professionals looked at my resume and scratched their young heads.

Here is a set of requirements that the employee must meet. And here is a resume of a person with twenty years of experience in banking, which is not at all like IT. 

It does not fit one another. As if someone were trying to insert plasticine into a keyhole. It seems that it fits, but there is zero sense.

To realize that you can make all sorts of interesting things out of this modeling clay, you need to sit down and think about it. Or better yet, meet with someone like that. But the HR person is busy and has plenty of other things to do.
At least, that's how I see the line of reasoning.

Realizing that I wasn't the type to just figure things out on my own, I started asking my friends for recommendations.

It helped a little. I even got a couple of interviews. But then a new complication came up.

I'm so greedy.

More precisely, economic. Because family, children, loans, cars... 

And even a stagnant salary in the banking sector was much better than what I could have been offered when I first entered the IT industry.

I thought for a long time what to do. At that time, it seemed that nothing good awaited me where I was. But surviving for a year or two from bread to water, until the salary grows to an acceptable level, is also not a good story.

And then one day I was having a beer with a good friend and telling him about my adventures in IT.

He asked, “Do you like it? Does it really draw you in?”

It turns out that, apparently, no.

Second, he says, every industry has its ups and downs. Things are going well in the IT sector right now. But no single sector can stay ahead of the rest all the time. Eventually, they’ll meet their staffing needs, or growth will slow down, or something else will happen. And everything will return to equilibrium.

At the time, that argument seemed weak. After all, everything under the sun is being automated, including light bulbs and coffee makers.

But then 2023 arrived, the cost of money around the world rose, and suddenly the prophecy came true. IT in Crisis. At least for now.

What's the moral of this story?

First of all, it's cool to change fields if you're not very old. Forty, it seems, is the heyday of professional strength. But it is in IT that you are already a pensioner at 35.

Second, sending out your resume doesn't accomplish a thing. To get your application considered for more than fifteen seconds, you need recommendations from people inside the companies.

Third, you have to get used to speaking and writing in IT jargon. For some reason, people in this field have come up with an excessive amount of professional slang. Or, to be more precise, they were simply too lazy to translate the terminology. After all, the field is predominantly English-speaking.

Fourth, it’s a good idea to switch to IT when things are really bad in your field. When the pay is terrible, there are no prospects, and you’re willing to start at any salary as long as there’s potential.

But the most important thing, it seems to me, is that IT should be fun. It should attract and excite on its own, not paying attention to the amount of compensation. Then it is easier to step into the unknown.

Actually, just forget all that advice.

Because, in the end, I never ended up working in IT. I continued working in my field, which I'm very happy about.

And I read about the layoffs at Google and Facebook with barely concealed glee.